


All I Want For Christmas

by theclaravoyant



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Like I'm Not Joking, Marriage Proposal, Obscene Fluff, Seriously Obscene Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 15:07:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5875531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclaravoyant/pseuds/theclaravoyant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fitz decides he's going to propose to Simmons. What better time to do it than their favourite time of the year?<br/>2014 FitzSimmons Secret Santa for anythas-thoughts on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All I Want For Christmas

Simmons stretched herself awake, smiling as the heavy lump that was Fitz obstructed the movement of her limbs. As he began to stir, she wriggled out of his arms and rolled out of the way, and sprang lightly to her feet. He scowled at her from the bed as she flicked through a few of the options in her wardrobe, picked one, and turned back to face him, the dress sweeping outward in the spin.

“Goooood morning, Mr Simmons,” she greeted with a smile, laying her selection on the end of the bed.

“It might be, three hours from now!” he retorted, scowling irritably. “And Mr Simmons? What's that about? That’s not how it works. Besides, we’re not even married. You wouldn’t like it if I started calling you Mrs Fitz now, would you?”

He shoved his face back into the pillows with an indignant puff of his chest, and almost missed the modest whisper:

“I…wouldn’t mind.”

Simmons blushed and shied away as Fitz lifted his head again. She busied herself with putting the dress on, while a little too intently avoiding Fitz’ gaze in the mirror.

“D’you wanna get married?” he asked, his voice softer and more solemn. “'Cause I mean, I just thought – y’know, fairytales and all that.”

Simmons looked at him. She could still feel the blush in her cheeks, but now it was echoed in his. 

“You think getting married is fairytale?”

“Well...it’s either that, or getting cynical about divorce rates and the history of women as property.”

“No, but I mean, you _want_ to get married?”

“Well, I- I don’t see why not, I mean- but if you don’t want to, don’t feel like-“ 

“Well we can’t _now,_ I mean we’ve ruined the whole thing!” She rolled her eyes at him, smiling. “But yes. At some point. I wouldn’t mind getting married. Except I have changed my mind about one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“That’s for me to know and you to get down on one knee for.” 

“What?”

“You want to have a fairytale, let’s have a fairytale. Propose! Skye has a few ideas, in case you’re wondering.” 

“You talked to Skye about this and not me?” 

“I thought you’d hate it. Y’know, stuffy traditions and…well, your dad…”

“My dad wasn’t my dad because he was married, Jemma. Marriage doesn’t kill relationships. Sometimes they just die. But sometimes they don’t. And we won’t, not like that. Married or not.”

“I know, Fitz. I trust you. I shouldn’t have brought it up. I’m sorry, it’s really killed the mood, hasn’t it?” She screwed her face up. “I’m terrible at this. I can’t do fluffy morning talk. I can’t do romance.”

“Well if it makes you feel any better, I can’t usually do _awake_ this time of the morning." He crawled across the covers to comfort her with gentle eyes. "I can be romantic enough for the two of us, if I have to be. It's a sacrifice I’m willing to make, future-Mrs-Fitz.”

She grinned again, this time so widely that when she tried to press her lips together they broke apart again. She took pair of earrings from the dresser, and fastened them as she moved back across the room.

“The girls and I are shopping for dinner,” she explained, whipping a brush through her hair quickly.

“Oh, good, make sure you get the corn buns that-“

“I will.”

“And that cranberry sauce that-“

“Yep. It’s all on the list.” She tapped her temple. “Even cream for the pumpkin pie.”

“You’re gold.”

“I know.” She smiled, and kissed him on the cheek, and bounced toward the door, where her purse was waiting. “I expect a full breakfast when I get back.”

“Done. Blueberry pancakes or regular?” 

“We don’t have blueberries.”

“We could.”

“I love you.” 

“Quite right, too.” 

She glared at him, but then blew him a kiss before disappearing out the door. He lay his head back down on his pillow and stared at the ceiling, wondering who he had finally managed to please enough in this universe for this to be his life. Jemma Simmons, hopefully. That was enough for him. 

_Blueberries,_ his memory prodded, and he rolled out of bed to go and find some.

–

“You look awfully chipper,” Hunter noted as Fitz returned, already neatly dressed and smiling with a paper bag full of fruit in his arms. 

“Yeah.” Fitz nodded as he began unpacking the bag. “Making Simmons breakfast.”

“Ahhhh the newlywed phase. I remember those days. I try not to, o’ course. Did I ever tell you about the time Bobbi-“

Fitz looked up, seizing the opportunity.

“How did you do it?”

Hunter frowned. “Well I wasn’t going to get into details, but-“

“No, no, I mean, how did you propose?”

“Uuuuuoooohhhhhh.” Hunter reached across the bench to steal a strawberry from the punnet Fitz had just set down. “I didn’t pick you two for the type to tie the knot.”

“Wouldn’a picked you either.”

“True.” Hunter bit into the strawberry and stared as dramatically as possible into the distance. Fitz rolled his eyes and began to pull the utensils for making pancakes from various cupboards.

“We were in Miami,” Hunter regaled. “On a case. Sort of. She was with SHIELD I was with…friends. And we ended up crossing paths. She beat the ever-living tripe out of me with those sticks and I, being the idiot that I am, told her I loved her for it. ‘Course she had to knock my lights out after that to avoid questions, but she found me that night and asked me if I meant it. There was a beach and a large amount of tequila and I don’t remember exactly what happened after that. But I did mean it.”

Hunter looked over at Fitz, who had only managed so far to put the flour in the bowl, his wide blue eyes enraptured by Hunter’s story. Hunter smiled and shook his head, getting up for another cup of tea.

“Ah, mate, you are in deep. You’re gonna do a better job of this than I did without batting an eyelid, don’t you worry. Tea?”

“…Yeah.” Fitz nods, finally snapping out of his trance at Hunter’s offer. He’d imagined the beach, sunset, Simmons giggling that distorted, deep giggle she did when she was tipsy, pressing back against him as she admired the way the pink and gold that lit the horizon shone in the ring on her finger. It would have been beautiful. Except, neither of them particularly enjoyed the beach. Not that it was awful, but a place with more significance and less wind and sand would probably be better.

Fitz' stomach rumbled, and he remembered that he was supposed to be making pancakes. He went to the refrigerator for eggs, his mind racing.

–

Days passed, and started turning into weeks, and Fitz was still struggling to think of the perfect location and circumstances of his proposal. He was making the ring, that was a given, but how to get it from his mind to her finger was a question to which the answer insisted on eluding his massive intellect. It was driving him to distraction.

“Yo. Fitz. Still with me?” Skye frowned at him. 

“Yeah. Yep. Not a problem. I can do it.” 

“I was asking you how, so _I_ can do it. You’re obviously thinking about something far more interesting than ones and zeroes. If it’s to do with a Christmas present for a certain English biochem specialist I suggest you hurry up with that. We’re probably getting snowed in today so if you need a Christmas Eve-Eve shopping trip, five minutes ago would be the time.”

Fitz glanced over the code before him and back to Skye’s face. _Skye has a few ideas,_ Simmons had said.

“What if I told you,” he suggested quietly, leaning in so that their conversation could not be overheard by the other lab techs, “that it’s not exactly a Christmas present?”

The sarcasm dropped off Skye’s face. Her eyes went wide, and then her mouth did, and she brought her hand up to muffle the choked squeak in the back of her throat. 

“Are you gonna help me or not?”

“I’m sorry,” Skye whispered. “Of course I am that’s just so cute oh my god she’s been talking to me for months I thought she was going to pop the question if you didn’t get your act together.” 

“Well I’m trying to get my act together, but I can’ think of the _right thing,_ y'know? Did Simmons tell you something?”

“Oh, no, you’re not stealing her ideas. You’ve gotta come up with it on your own. That’s what makes it special.” 

“I’ve tried thinking of it on my own!” he hissed. “She told me to ask you if I needed help!”

“Yeah and I’m telling you, you’re not getting her ideas out of me.” 

“Fine. Still help me though?” 

Skye pulled her laptop toward herself, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. The two lab techs at the mass spectrometer looked over at the one by the fridge, and assessed as they often had to these days, that Coulson’s motley crew was up to something again. They went back to their work, taking conscious efforts to ignore what was going on. Skye smiled her thanks at them, though they could not see it, and turned her attention back to Fitz.

“Well, it’s Christmas, right?” she posed. “How does Simmons feel about Christmas?”

“She loves it.”

“Good. So it’s a good time then, good choice. See, you can do this. Now, c’mon, there must be something you guys do that you could work the question into. Bake it into Christmas cake, hang it on the tree, put it in a cracker…then I guess it might go flying and we don’t wan-“

“Stockings.” 

“What?” Skye fought her grin when Fitz’ eyes lit up. 

“Stockings,” he repeated. “Our first Christmas together, Jemma was sick, so she got an extension on the term paper that meant it was due midnight, Christmas. We’d both been about to go home for Christmas, but you know she loves homework-

“- more than life itself-“

“Right, so she called and cancelled her flight and we decided to just do stockings instead – sort of like a Secret Santa but, y’know, not secret. Anyway, I finished the paper and-“

“You’d intercepted the phone line, knowing she would call to cancel, so as far as the airline knew her tickets had never been cancelled at all.”

Fitz was taken aback. “She told you?”

“Of course she did. I was bugging her. Nobody hangs stockings any more.”

“It was just an old tradition from home. 'S what we brought with us.” 

“No, Fitz, it was you being a big softie genius with perfect gift ideas. I told you you could do it. Now where’s the ring?”

Fitz straightened and moved away from the bench, presumably to fetch it, and Skye, who hadn’t been expecting him to be so willing to show it off, reached out to stop him.

“No, wait!”

Fitz levelled his feet and turned back to her. 

“Don’t show me,” Skye insisted. “The first time I wanna see it is on Simmons’ finger.”

“Are you sure?”

Fitz raised an eyebrow, and slowly reached into his pocket and pulled out a box, slightly bigger than a golf ball, and battered, resembling a rock covered in black velvet. Skye’s eyes widened. With each passing heartbeat she felt herself lean toward it.

“Fine!” She caved. “Show me!”

–

Jemma Simmons usually did a good job holding her liquor, but with all that had happened the last couple of years, she found herself going a little hard on the Christmas cheer. Fortunately, she had slept off the worst of a bad hangover, and Fitz had promised her breakfast in bed, which she could definitely get used to, so life was, at this moment, in her warm and cozy bed on Christmas morning, really quite enjoyable. 

She heard a _phat_ against her duvet. Though her eyes were still shut, she furrowed her brow.

_Phat._

She huffed recognition of the arrival of whoever was in the room and throwing things at her. 

_Phat._

She groaned and opened her eyes. It was Fitz, Santa pom-pom dangling off his head, cradling her fat Christmas stocking in his arms, and throwing…was that _coal?_

Simmons pulled herself into a sitting position and examined one of the nearest projectiles. Yes, it was indeed, coal. She frowned at the smudge it left on her apricot sheets, then up at Fitz, who tossed another lump onto the bed.

“Are you trying to tell me I’ve been naughty?” Simmons teased. Fitz hugged the stocking a little tighter to his chest, his expression mildly scandalized.

“What? No.”

Simmons smiled, curious to see where Fitz was going with this but equally enjoying the way he flustered.

“If this is your way of initiating dirty talk, you know this is not what they mean, right?”

“I wasn’t- There was no dirty talk. You were sleeping in, that’s all, and your pancakes are ready and you should eat them warm. Your comfortable food consumption is my only concern. No ulterior motives whatsoever.”

She eyed him up and down.

“Right.”

“Yeah. Right. Good.” 

“Pancakes?” 

“Coming.”

He disappeared from the doorway and Simmons rolled her eyes, smiling. She knotted her hand in the empty sheets where he usually slept. What were the chances of her ending up in that room, on that date, with that seat to spare, all those years ago? The universe coming together and bursting apart and coming together again…and bringing her blueberry pancakes in bed on Christmas.

When Fitz returned with the tray, there was one more piece of coal, resting between their teacups. But instantly, she noticed this one was not like the others. Instead of a brittle, powdery texture, this one appeared as if made out of black velvet. She saw a very fine crack running horizontally across it, cutting up and down as the battered shape dictated. Her eyes widened, and she looked across the tray at Fitz as he settled back into her place beside her, and held the tray out to her, tea-end first. She picked up the box, and stared at it for a few seconds, hardly able to believe what she knew she was holding in her hands. She forgot to breathe, until Fitz leaned across and kissed her cheek.

“Open it,” he whispered.

She did, and a modestly sparkling, classic gold ring glinted up at her. But in its centre was not a diamond; rather, a smooth, midnight blue stone of mysterious origins and geological classification, with what appeared to be glitter or tiny precious stones suspended in the shape of a galaxy, hanging in the blueness. As she slipped it onto her finger and turned it this way and that to examine it in the light, Simmons’ eyes began to fill with tears. Her heart felt warm but compressed, like a pillow someone was hugging too hard, and the moment she took a breath, it burst into a shower of feathers.

“Oh, Fitz! It’s beautiful! But - your hand! How did you-?” 

He smiled, and in his face she could see the hours he’d worked, how very proud he was, and how very exhausted, and how glad he was that she’d liked it, and how that made it all worth it. As well as she could without upending their breakfast, she threw herself across the space between them and wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek and then his lips.

“Merry Christmas, Jemma,” he said, smiling as she nuzzled into his shoulder. He wrapped an arm around her and used it to cut and spear a piece of pancake with her fork. She laughed, still admiring the ring, as he waved the pancake in front of her face in offering.

“Oh, Fitz.”

She opened her mouth, but Fitz had apparently decided she’d taken too long, and ate the piece of pancake himself. She elbowed him. 

“Alright, alright.”

He cut another piece. 

“Here comes the aeroplane, soon-to-be-Mrs-Fitz. Or would you prefer to keep Simmons?”

“I think I’d prefer _Fitzsimmons,_ wouldn’t you? We wouldn’t even need to hyphenate. I mean, there’ll be months to discuss it between now and the wedding, but it’s at least worth thinking about.”

After taking a moment more to admire the ring, she plucked the fork from his awestruck hand and ate the pancake, grinning to herself. 

“Merry Christmas, Fitz.”


End file.
